


Just What I Needed

by My_Barbaric_Yawp



Series: You May Find Yourself... [1]
Category: Spirited
Genre: F/M, Family Feels, Fix-It, Post-Canon, Post-Canon Fix-It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-11
Updated: 2020-06-11
Packaged: 2021-03-04 06:07:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,996
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24658840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/My_Barbaric_Yawp/pseuds/My_Barbaric_Yawp
Summary: After spiriting for a year and returning to a whole new life, Suzy and Henry find themselves dealing with yet another surprise. Maybe this one will be for the better.
Relationships: Suzy Darling/Henry Mallet
Series: You May Find Yourself... [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1792345
Comments: 3
Kudos: 12





	Just What I Needed

It starts on a Tuesday, of all things. Just a normal, boring Tuesday when Elvis is at Steve's, and Verity is dragging her feet getting ready for school like the newly minted tween she is. Henry is minding his own business, smelling his coffee in the breakfast nook and reading the front page of the paper like the old man he should be, even if his face doesn’t show it.

Suzy was prepared for Verity to be late for breakfast. She was resigned to Verity being late to school. But she was ill prepared, to say the least, to find herself retching up her breakfast in the downstairs loo two minutes before the school run.

"Suze?" That was Henry at the door, kindly not popping his head through the wood to give her some privacy. "You all right?"

"I'm fine," Suzy says, catching another whiff of something that sets off her gag reflex again.

"Yeah, you sound all right and all," Henry says on the other side of the door, sounding just a touch amused over the deeper tone of worry lurking underneath. Suzy can picture him in the hall, hands on his hips, shifting his weight from one foot to another. Antsy for something to do—someway to help.

Before she can muster a reply, Verity's in the hall as well.

"What's wrong with mum?" she asks, which is odd, but Suzy doesn't even have a chance to wonder why it's odd before Henry's responding to the question with all his usual attitude.

"She's fucking sick, isn't she? Why aren't you at school?"

"I need a ride," Verity says, sounding for all the world like she's talking to Henry, which can't be right, except then Henry's talking back.

"Hang about," he says. "Can you fucking hear me?"

"I've always been able to hear you, Henry. It's the seeing you that's new."

 _Huh_ , Suzy thinks, and then she's throwing up again, and she doesn't think again for quite some time.

***

"So let me get this straight," Henry says for what feels like the fifteenth time. "You've always been able to hear me?"

"Sort of," Verity says. She’d ended up staying home from school today. Suzy wasn't up to driving her, and she’d figured that they had bigger problems to deal with right now than Verity's grasp on pre-algebra.

"I could always hear the beats in the silence when mum was listening to you," Verity tells Henry, "and I could hear you sometimes, when I was falling asleep, and you were singing. It was nice. I like it when you sing to me."

"I'll be fucked," Henry says, still staring at Verity like she's got three heads. "Fucking hell."

"Do you think we could maybe cut back a little on the F-word?" Suzy asks. "Now that my twelve year old can hear you?"

"I don't mind," Verity says brightly at the same time Henry says, "She doesn't give a fuck, do you kid?" and Suzy thinks for a moment about a future in which Henry fucking Mallet teaches her teenage daughter about swearing and eyeliner and not taking any shit from boys, and she thinks, _yeah, this is it_. This could work.

"Could you at least try?" she asks. "For me?"

Henry rolls his eyes, but he doesn't tell her to fuck off, so it's a start at least.

"Verity, when did you start seeing Henry?" Suzy asks.

"After dad's wedding," Verity says. "He sort of faded into focus, you know? After you kind of...woke up? It was like you were fine one minute, and then you were alive the next, and that night Henry came to the window--just a presence really, nothing really sharp that I could see at the time--but you started talking to him again, and I realized that's what was missing. Without Henry, you just weren't alive, really."

Suzy can't really argue with that. She hadn't been alive that year while she was spiriting with Henry. She'd come home to her ex's wedding, and an unhaunted dental practice, and a boring new boyfriend, and her mother's sudden death, and she'd thought then that mum was right. Real life had nothing on spiriting.

Aside from her children, of course, and they outweighed the rest. They had to. Suzy can still see Jonquil on those steps, waiting desperately for mum to come home. Suzy can't do that to Verity.

Not even for Henry.

"I'm sorry sweetie," she says to Verity, pulling her in for a hug on the couch. "I shouldn't have left you like that."

"It was okay," Verity says. "It was kind of nice, to be normal like that for a bit. Only a bit though. Having you really here—seeing Henry—this is better.”

She’s got her big, little-girl eyes trained on both of them, and when Suzy looks to Henry, his eyes are all soft and warm.

“It is good, kid, no doubt about that,” he says, reaching out a hand like he wants to pat her hair before he remembers that he can’t. Suzy aches for them all then—her little family, hopelessly separated by touch.

“Well,” she says finally, blinking away tears, “now you know about Henry. Really know, I mean. Do you have any questions, sweetheart? I know it can’t be easy.”

“I guess there is one question…”

“Yes?”

“So this morning—I don’t know how to say this—”

“You can say anything, sweetie, really.”

“Okay,” Verity takes a deep breath. “So this morning—when you were sick—do you think—do you think you're pregnant?”

And _oh_ , Suzy thinks. _Now I do._

***

“What the fuck!” Henry says. Shouts, actually. Well, whisper-shouts. Suzy had told Verity she didn't know and sent her daughter off to amuse herself with something harmless—setting Potter on fire, maybe, or poisoning the garden with weed killer. Something a little less explosive than the impossible question she’d just asked, and well out of ear shot of Henry’s quickly escalating questions.

“Are you pregnant, Suze?” He’s right in her face, bending down to eye level, searching for answers that she just doesn’t have.

“I don’t know,” she says, and maybe she’s whisper-shouting, too. “I wasn’t here either, remember? I don’t know what spiritless me got up to last year. It was bad enough realizing I’d let Aaron move into the house, much less this!”

“You can’t,” he says, looking shattered and heartbroken and a little bit teary. “You can’t be having that wanker’s kid.”

“Clearly not,” she says. “If he was only wanking, this wouldn’t be a problem, now would it?”

“Jesus,” Henry says, looking away from her, brow pinched tight. She follows his gaze out the window. Verity’s outside—no weed killer in sight—and she’s laying in the grass and blowing bubbles straight up, one after another. So many bubbles floating upward and bursting in the clear blue sky.

“Well,” he says finally, looking back to Suzy with those deep blue, soft eyes, “I like your other kids just fine. What’s one more, eh?”

Suzy starts to cry. She can’t help it. She hasn’t even taken a test, but she almost doesn’t have to. This is just how her life goes. Get a divorce, fall in love with a ghost. Go on a holiday, lose your mum to lung cancer. Nothing is ever easy for poor, broken Suzy Darling.

“Hey,” Henry says, hands floating by her shoulders, thinking to comfort her with a touch. “Hey, now, Suze. It’ll be okay. I mean I won’t be too much help at the early bits, what with not being able to change a nappy, right? But I’ll do my best. I’ll keep you company. I’ll watch out for the lad. Or lass. I’m not picky. We’ll figure this out, yeah? You, and me, and baby makes three. You’re not on your own.”

His hands make contact then. Real contact. Not just ghostly cold brushing against her arms, but actual firm pressure and warmth cupping around her shoulder blades, and they both freeze, staring at the place where her skin meets his.

“Huh,” he says, stunned. “That’s new.”

***

They don’t waste time with questions. It’s been two months since they spirited, and in those two months they’ve tried every trick in the book to navigate a sex life in which they can never touch. But now—

 _Now we’re on fire_ , Suzy thinks hazily, in between hot, hurried kisses on their way up the stairs. It was only a miracle that saved them from fucking in the kitchen, right in front of the window where Verity could have looked up at any moment and seen them.

Well, less of a miracle and more of Betty. The grey cat had sat on the counter and howled until they relocated, which was the right call, Suzy thinks while she reaches for Henry’s fly in the upstairs hallway. He’s hard against her palm—twitching against her hand—and she moans into his mouth, against his lips, while he pulls her forward, forward, forward, until they land with a crash against their bedroom door.

“Hang on,” Henry says, breaking their kiss suddenly. He’s voice is hushed and out of breath. “Are we spiriting?”

“No idea,” Suzy says, nuzzling into his hand against her cheek. “I don’t care.”

“You will,” he reminds her, turning her face to meet his eyes, which are bright and sincere. “Who knows what might happen if you’re gone for another year. You’re pregnant for god's sake. We can’t miss the little tyke’s arrival.”

Right, Suzy thinks. Of course. When did Henry Mallet get to be the voice of reason in this household?

“I can’t believe you’re the one ready to give up a shag,” she says out loud, and he snorts and leans in to kiss her, soft and sweet.

“It’s not the shag I’m worried about giving up,” he says. “It’s my life with you that matters, Suze.”

“Yeah,” she says against his lips. “You’re right. Let’s wake up.”

***

They really do try, but the more they do, the more Suzy realizes she has no idea how they got back the last two times. They’d always been pressed for time—desperately trying to cling on—and she’d never noticed a trigger between one moment with Henry’s hands holding her tight about the waist, and the next in free fall back to earth.

With nothing to go on, she’s just trying to focus on the real world—Verity’s smiles, Elvis’s music, Jonquil’s terrible cooking, Steve’s smarmy smirk.

Nothing is pulling her out of this dream or this spirit realm, and when she opens her eyes, Henry’s pinched brows seem to indicate he’s having about the same amount of luck.

“Henry?”

“Yeah?”

“I don’t think we’re spiriting.”

“We must be, love.”

“I don’t remember traveling,” she says. “Do you?”

“No, but we must have. Unless this is a dream?”

Suzy looks around at the upstairs landing. There’s a laundry basket sitting outside Elvis’s room. It’s full of football kit and manky towels, and it’s all too real, she thinks, for this to be one of their mutual dreams.

“It’s not a dream,” she says, “and after an hour we’ll know it’s not a spirit trip either.”

“An hour?” Henry asks. “You want to give up a year of your life if you’re wrong?”

Suzy sighs and runs her hand up the back of his neck.

“I know one thing,” she says. “If this is a dream or spirit trip, then the surest way to make it end is just getting to make love to you.”

“Right,” he says, grinning now while he leans in to press his forehead to hers. “Our luck, this will be over before I can even get your clothes off.”

“Care to find out?”

***

Somewhere between round two and round three, the hour passes unremarked. They’re too busy chasing after each other’s mouths and running their hands across every scrap of skin—reveling in the completely novel amount of time they have to explore each other’s bodies in the gentle dappled sunlight of this suddenly lazy afternoon.

“I can’t believe this is real,” he says. “You’re so real.”

“Yes,” she says, full to the brim with him and his love while this moment of perfection just stretches on and on and on forever.

Eventually, they look at the clock. To be more precise, eventually Potter knocks over the clock. Suzy leans over the side of the bed to pick it up and nearly drops it again.

It’s been two hours since the kitchen. Two hours of Henry in their bed, touching her like she’s never had the chance to be touched before, and when she shows the clock to Henry, he’s stunned. He takes it from her hand. Tosses it from one hand to the other. Sets it on the bedside table again.

“Suze—” he says, “—am I—alive?”

It’s an exhilarating thought, and a terrifying one. If Henry Mallet is alive, how is the world going to cope? How is Henry going to cope? He’ll have to get a new jacket, and that’s just for starters. He’ll need to shave, again, and eat, and go to the bathroom, and oh, yeah, explain to the world just how exactly he’s managed to return from the actual dead.

“Do you feel alive?” Suzy asks, in the absence of anything better to say, and Henry shrugs.

“Dunno. It’s been awhile, yeah?”

“Right. Let me try something then.”

“Anything,” he says while she leans in close and presses her ear over his heart.

It doesn’t beat. She’s not sure if she’s relieved or disappointed. Which would be worse—a ghost who’s alive or a walking-talking man without a heartbeat?

But even though his heart is still, she can still sense a pulse there under his skin. The idea of a heartbeat, maybe. The echo of silence where the beat should be.

That’s crazy, right? Except Suzy gave up on crazy three years ago when she moved in with a ghost.

“I don’t think you’re done yet,” she says.

“What?”

“This,” she says, patting his chest, “or whatever’s going on with you. It’s not over. You don’t have a heartbeat but you do have something. Something that’s changing, I think. Something that’s becoming more real.”

“Well, fuck me,” he says. “This is real?”

“Yeah,” she says, running a hand over her stomach and thinking about the baby that’s probably real, too. “Yeah, I think it is.”

***

If they could avoid talking to Jonquil, they would. Really, they would try anything if there was anyone else to try. But after searching the web for any witch or medium who might be able to shed some light on their situation, Suzy’s resigned herself to the thought that of the scant leads they have, Jonquil might just be the most reliable.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Henry asks as Jonquil’s car pulls into the drive. “You know how she can be, Suze. She’ll think you’re mental, and she’ll think you got pregnant just to steal her baby’s thunder.”

He’s right probably, but then it’s been a year since Jonquil was, well, full Jonquil. In the time Suzy had been away, Jonquil had really come into her own. Something about finally getting to say goodbye to mum had healed her in some way and having her own daughter had helped smooth those scars even more. She would always be a lot, Jonquil. She wasn’t made to be boring. But she also wasn’t absolutely batshit anymore, either.

“Is that Henry Mallet?” Jonquil asks, blinking up at Henry the minute she gets in the door, and _okay_ , Suzy thinks, _at least we’re both mental then_.

“Yes?” she says, and Henry just shrugs with his hands in his too tight pockets and says “Hey, Jonks. How’s it going?”

Jonquil’s eyes blow up like saucers as she turns her gaze to her sister. “Henry Mallet knows who I am?”

“Well—” Suzy says, looking to Henry for support, “—he’s been living with me for about three years now, so yeah, Jonquil. He knows who you are.”

“Sure, I do,” Henry says. “Never reckoned I’d have a sister-in-law, you know. It’s all been a bit of a surprise.”

“Surprise!” Jonquil shouts. “You’re supposed to be dead. You look exactly like the poster I had of you in the eighties. That’s freaky.”

“Well, you’re not wrong. I am dead.”

“What?!”

“You know what,” Suzy says, “how about I open a bottle of a wine?”

“Uh, Suze?” Henry’s leaning into her now—breath warm against her ear—trying to keep his voice down. “You can’t drink, remember? The baby?”

“Oh shit,” she says, loudly. “The baby.”

“The baby?!?”

***

Calming Jonquil down takes an hour, a Valium, and a full pot of mint-anise tea. By the time she’s able to sit upright on the couch under her own power, she knows everything. Well, almost everything. Neither Suzy nor Henry felt the need to mention the night they’d accidentally taken Zach’s body for a joy ride, and if they could get through the next round of family introductions without that coming up, it would be an actual miracle.

Not that they’re due a miracle, any time soon. Suzy’s beginning to think they must be reaching the upper limit on reality bending phenomena already today. Sometime before lunch, to be exact.

“So let me get this straight,” Jonquil says, starting to sound alarmingly similar to Henry while she navigates this spiral of thought. “You met a ghost when you moved into the flat, and instead of running for the hills like any sane person, you fell in love with him, ran off with him, and now you’re having a baby?”

Suzy and Henry share a look. His eyes are all crinkled at the corners—amused and affectionate. Suzy loves them more every day.

“Yep, that’s pretty much it,” she says.

“And the father?” Jonquil asks.

Suzy winces but Henry just shrugs.

“Must have been that mortal wanker while we were spiriting.”

“You think?” Jonquil looks puzzled, and Suzy can sense another shoe about to drop.

“You don’t?”

Her sister shrugs and cups her mug of tea against her chest like a shield. “I don’t know. You two just never struck me as particularly physical, you know?”

“What?” Suzy looks to Henry, who looks confused as well as a bit pleased, and then she looks back to Jonquil. “But, we were living together. The kid’s thought we were going to get married. We were sharing a bed, for god’s sake. We must have been sleeping together.”

“Well, sleeping together, yeah. Full on sexy times? I’m not so sure.”

“Really?” Henry looks happier than he has since they got back, and he was pretty pleased earlier with all the afternoon delight upstairs.

“You said you weren’t sure you were feeling a spark,” Jonquil tells Suzy, and it kind of makes sense. The part of Suzy that sparks had been on vacation after all. You can’t expect fully functioning chemistry when one of the key ingredients is missing.

“But if it’s not Aaron’s baby—”

“Who else did you sleep with while we were away?” Henry sounds less happy, all of a sudden, and Suzy can’t all together blame him. It’s not fun to realize you have no idea what your body’s been up to with whom, either. Especially when the result is so life changing.

“I don’t know,” Suzy says, close to crying from the hormones and the stress, and Henry shuts up immediately and wraps his arms around her like a cocoon, pressing reassuring kisses into her hair.

“It’s all right, love. I’m sorry. There’s nothing to be upset about. We weren’t here. It doesn’t matter. We’ll never know.”

“Well,” Jonquil says, peering at them with a growing smile, ‘there is one father I think you should consider.”

“Yeah?” Henry asks, and he’s brave. Suzy doesn’t even want to know.

“Yeah,” Jonquil says. “I mean it’s been three years, and today I can see you. You can hold Suzy. Today—the day she started to notice she might be pregnant.”

“Yeah, Jonks, I was here, remember?”

“Well you were there, too.”

“What?”

“In the other world, you know? The other reality where you’re flesh and blood, and you can have wild, unprotected sex with my sister? You were there, and Suzy was there, and if I’m right we should maybe start to consider that the beginnings of baby Mallet might have been there, as well.”

If Suzy wasn’t already sure today wasn't a dream, that would have clinched it. If anything was going to wake her up, the idea that she’d accidentally made a ghost baby sure would.

Henry’s mouth nearly hits the floor before he finds the wherewithal to respond.

“You think I fathered this baby?”

Jonquil shrugs again. “Do you see any other gentlemen with a historically lax approach to birth control lining up to rip my sister’s panties off, Henry?”

“But I’m a ghost!”

“Really?” Jonquil looks down at his hand, which is holding onto Suzy’s with a tight, decidedly solid grip. “Cause you don’t seem to be anymore.”

***

“He’s still a ghost,” Jenny says later, when the whole crew is gathered together in the living room. It’s been a long, long night full of introductions, exclamations, gratuitous amounts of pizza, and three consecutively positive pregnancy tests. The kids have gone to bed—or at least Verity has. Elvis had slipped away to be a teenager in the privacy of his own room, but not before extracting a promise of a guitar lesson from Henry in the morning.

With the big kids gone, that leaves the adults. Jonquil and Zach are curled up in a chair together, while Jonquil rocks baby Lola’s carrier with her foot. Jenny and Steve have the loveseat, and while Steve is not coping particularly well with the idea that Henry Mallet was never really there to support him, Jenny is just excited to finally be able to see a proper ghost.

“I can still smell him,” she says. “It’s not like a human smell. Well it is—cigarettes and beer and something spiced—whiskey, maybe? But it’s also more than that, you know? It’s electric. Otherworldly.”

“So what does that mean?” Henry asks. “I’m more than a ghost, but I’m less than human? I might be able to make a baby, but I have no idea if I’ll be able to hold them once they’re born? How is that fair?”

“Oh, it’s not,” Jenny says. “Nothing is. The universe doesn’t care about fair. It cares about balance. So, you make a life in another realm. That’s cool. That's great! But then in this realm, you have to make another life again. That’s you, Henry. Two lives, one from each realm. Balance. Or at least, I think it’s going to be.”

“What do you mean?”

“I think you’re going to grow even more solid while this baby grows. I think when this baby is born, you’ll be born, too, in some fundamental way. You’ll be alive again. Forever, this time. Well, forever for as long as your second mortal life will be. You’ll age, you’ll get sick, and eventually, you will die again. Just like Suzy. Just like all of us.”

It takes a moment for that thought to sink in. It makes sense to Suzy in some strange way. It explains why Henry can touch her now—why he’s growing stronger every minute—why his heartbeat is starting to sound like one day soon it might just decide to beat.

“Tough break,” Steve says, shattering the silence with his usual tact. “You’ve lost your immortality, mate.”

But Henry isn’t listening to him at all. He’s staring at Suzy, cupping her cheek for what might be the hundredth time today, and she isn’t sick of it at all.

“I get to grow old with you,” he says softly— _reverentially_ —and _yes_ , Suzy thinks. _This is just what we needed_.

This is everything.

**Author's Note:**

> I know that literally no one was asking for this story, but if you found it anyway, thank you so much for reading! I stumbled onto this little show on Amazon, and I watched two seasons in one day. I needed to write Henry and Suzy a happy ending, because they were totally haunting me.
> 
> Title from the song by The Cars


End file.
